Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Or, a brief musical interlude?  I am still reading books by John and Alan Lomax, and others, from my music shelves here at home, but I took a little break last night after picking up a secondhand copy of Counting My Chickens... and Other Home Thoughts by then-Deborah Devonshire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2001) at a thrift shop yesterday.  It's a diminutive book made up of short diary entries and deadpan funny essays on all sorts of topics and people.  When I opened it right up to the delicious little section entitled Stolen Books, about the books she keeps in her own room so houseguests won't steal them, I had to smile when she told me that of her "unstealables" (p.167), "Most precious is The Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley."  (p. 168) Which is of course Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown 1994).  I also had to smile that she added a The to the title, since she was famous for not reading books.  But loved this one, being an Elvis fan!  She says of the book, "If that goes, I give up." (ibid)  I love small coincidences such as this that somehow knit the disparate threads of one's reading together.  Okay, back to the books...